Real Housewives‘ Kim Richards finally explains what drove her to drink again

Kim Richards has revealed what compelled her to drink again after her third trip to rehab — and her explanation is totally unsurprising.

The Real Housewives star, who was arrested at the Beverly Hills Hotel on April 16 after getting messy drunk and kicking a cop, told Dr. Phil that her deteriorating relationship with her sister, costar Kyle Richards, and her niece caused her to pick up the bottle again.

“The relationship between my sister and niece [has] been destroyed,” she sobbed. “It’s been a bad year for us.”

She said the night of her arrest, she was reading mean comments about herself and her family on a blog. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I was thinking about the blog. I poured myself a drink of vodka. I got in the car. I started to drive and it was about when I hit the hotel that started to feel it. I started talking to some people and the maître d’ told me I had to go back to my table. The waiter said I was trespassing. He said, ‘If you don’t leave we’re going to call the police.'”

“It isn’t the blog or the season that upset me,” Richards said. “It was the relationship between my sister and my niece that’s been destroyed. But the bottom line is, it’s the overall outcome of where today is with my relationships with the people I love the most, and that’s what really started getting me upset.”

She also admitted that the night of her arrest was not the first time she drank since her last stint in rehab, saying she had wine “a couple other times over the past few months.”